Making a headboard (or: How to ensure that every other Christmas is disappointing)

January 17, 2013

Hi. This is Jamie, Katie’s husband/proofreader/opener of stubborn pickle jars. But now, apparently, I can also add carpenter to that list. For Christmas this year, Katie asked Santa, in no uncertain terms, for a custom headboard for our Ikea Malm bed. I (Santa) enthusiastically agreed — sure! A headboard! Some wood and some stain, a few nails. I’ve never really built anything made out of wood before, but c’mon, how hard could it be…?

(Quick aside: going back to pickle jars, I should add that I’m also the sole closer of jars — or any container — in this house. Katie seems to have skipped that lesson growing up. Every jar in this house is either half- or unevenly closed. She once read that President Obama has this same “problem,” which somehow renders it a sign of strong leadership. Man, I’m glad I can vent to you guys.)

I started by devoting an entire day to just wrapping my head around the project. Much like Michelangelo staring at a solid block of marble before turning it into his David, I stared at a computer screen, looking for inspiration and tips and any general guidance. Visually, I wanted the headboard to look and feel similar to our rocking bench, with its reclaimed wood of different widths and colors, and I also wanted it to complement our existing wood flooring.

After much Googling, I came across a few good examples of reclaimed wood headboards, notably this tutorial and this project, which isn’t a headboard but still looked exactly the way I wanted my headboard to look. I also relied heavily on Young House Love’s instructions on creating a custom headboard and their wood-weathering tips.

With my vision starting to take shape, I sat down and just starting drawing and doing math. This was probably the hardest part of the entire project — planning. I filled up several pages in my notebook with crappy sketches and some barely-remembered algebra, trying to figure out what dimensions this needed to be and how many boards I could fit into those dimensions.

With my materials list and measurements in hand, I went to Home Depot the following day. I picked up four 1×6 and two 1×4 whitewood boards and two 1×2 in southern yellow pine. I looked for boards that had lots of knots and visible woodgrain, making sure that I got fairly straight pieces. (The existing imperfections in the wood come into play later with the stressing and staining.) Home Depot will cut your wood with their fancy saw, so I had them cut my boards to the dimensions I had figured out. It needed to be precise, because I would be putting this on top of our bed’s existing headboard.

For those interested in doing their own version of this, here’s my entire list of supplies. (Note: The cut dimensions are meant specifically for those who are interested in creating a queen-sized Malm headboard, like we did.)

With all my supplies lined up and ready to go, I could finally get to work! I started by distressing the wood using several “techniques,” such as:

Bashing it with a bag of screws.

Or whacking it with a hammer.

Again, Young House Love has all these methods for distressing wood described here, complete with video of this delicate art. I particularly loved bashing the wood with a hammer, especially on the edges. If it started to splinter, I figured I was doing a good job. In addition to YHL’s methods, I took a flathead screwdriver and tapped it into the soft whitewood, emulating a staple puncture. I also took the back of the hammer and whacked the boards with it in one spot to mimic wood rot. Amateur-tip: Don’t get carried away, or it can look like creepy teeth marks.

I then sanded the entire board, smoothing out splintered areas and everything else. I used the heavier grit paper here.

Next, staining. I had never done this before but there’s nothing to it.

You just apply the stain, let it sit for as rich as you’d like the coat to be, then wipe it off.

After all the beating and sanding and staining, have a beer.

Ponder existence.

Then, let the wood dry for 8 hours or simply overnight.

The next day, I took the wood and applied polyurethane to seal it. Again, I’d never done this before, but there’s really nothing to it. After letting the first coat dry for a few hours, I gently sanded it with 220 grit paper. This was nerve-racking, because I thought I’d sanded off some of the lighter coats of stain, which led to panicked restaining and more waiting. Turns out I was wrong, but hey. Trial and error.

After gently sanding it, I applied a second coat of polyurethane. Then, more waiting. I let dry for 24 hours this time.

The weather shifted, and the forecast said it would rain heavily all night. I decided to build a makeshift canopy to protect the drying wood.

I dubbed it Occupy North Pole. (This is what happens when you don’t have a garage to work in)

After everything was dried and ready, it was time to start building this thing.

As I’ve mentioned, this project is specifically cut for our Ikea Malm bed. You can see in the picture how I planned to engineer it and attach it to the existing headboard. I took two pieces of cut 1×3 (also SYP) and screwed them into the sides of the existing headboard.

You can see some of the “distressing” details here.

Then, I screwed the front-facing headboard planks into these side pieces.

As you can see, I did not have a lot of room to drill. I think this was the most problematic part of this project (especially when I split one of the side framing pieces). During this phase, I realized I probably could have just drilled straight into the headboard, or maybe even drilled from the rear to hide the screws.

However, this way, the frame and boards are all attached, and there’s only four screws holding it to the Ikea headboard. If we ever wanted to take it off for whatever reason, it’d be as simple as removing those four screws. It feels sturdy, so I think I made the right decisions. I consider myself to know very little about engineering or carpentry, so these choices are mostly thoroughly considered shots in the dark.

The last step was to attach the final piece of wood on top to cover up the headboard. And voila!

The next morning, I woke up with a billion ideas about how I could’ve done this project better, one of which I implemented! I went to the store for the 20th time that week, bought four L-brackets, and attached them to the top piece. I should have done this from the start, but whatever. I’m now happy to report that it’s as solid as a rock.

The final final step was to wrap it so Katie wouldn’t be able to see it until Christmas morning. (Yes, we slept in a bed with a headboard wrapped like a gift for several days.) And here’s what the headboard looks like today:

So that’s it. Some wood, stain, and screws (with a lot of planning) resulted in a headboard. I can’t believe how well it turned out, considering every single step was something I’d never done before. In fact, this post almost took as long to write as it took to make the headboard. NEVER AGAIN.

15 comments

Ha, funny enough, we took that detail out of the blog post because it was so lengthy. Jamie actually bought them for the project, figuring we could get good use out of them. It was $15 for the pair. You’re welcome to use them if you ever find yourself doing carpentry work!

This is beautiful! I have a double malm bed and am trying to figure out dimensions/amount of material required. has anyone tweaked this amazing tutorial to fit a double yet? this is one of my first DIY so i want to make sure i do it right!

Thanks so much for posting about how you did this. I have two 1.5 inch thick old planks that are 12.15 inches wide. I am planning to attach them to the headboard of our existing king bed. I hadn’t thought about how to cover up the sides of the headboard where the old headboard would be visible. I have some extra length in the planks so maybe I could use strips of them on the sides? The part about the challenges you faced with screwing the boards in was really helpful. What a great idea to screw them in from the back of the headboard so the screws wouldn’t be visible!

I really like the bedding. Any chance you know where you got it? Thanks!

Thank you so much for this! My husband decided that he was going to do something cool to our malm bed and found this link…within 3 days we had a beautiful new headboard. Your instructions were perfect, making what could have been weeks of work into a 3 day project. We love it!

**his only newbie distresser tip was to not be shy about making huge gouges and dents into the wood. At first he was afraid, but after applying some stain he realized it didn’t look distressed enough so had to go back and give it another pounding!

Hi! I love the look of this and want to recreate! I was wondering if in the 11th picture you see the pieces of wood laying on the bed where the box spring and mattress go, do you now just have the mattress on top of the wood you added? does the mattress move at all? Thanks!

Hi. Did you leave the color of the bed on the sides white? I’m so happy I saw this post. I want a pallet/wooden headboard and this is perfect. I have this type of bed in brown, so now I’m thinking of painting it white.